The National New Play Network, an alliance of 26 professional nonprofit theaters that champion the development, production and continued life of new plays, has chosen popular area playwright William Missouri Downs among six writers whose works will be presented as staged readings at its ninth annual showcase Nov. 18-20 in Philadelphia.

The National Showcase of New Plays is a traveling annual new-play festival that presents six plays to about 100 invited theater professionals and agents from around the country. The showcase is a unique opportunity for production-ready scripts to be heard by the people most willing and likely to produce them.

“The vast majority of the scripts read at the showcase go on to professional productions within and outside the National New Play Network,” the NNPN said in a statement.

Susan (Amy Resnick, front) unwinds as David (Gabriel Marin) and Hannah (Carrie Paff) discuss her unexpected arrival in 'Collapse' at the Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley, Calif. The play will be produced in Denver next season by Curious Theatre. Photo by David Allen.

Denver’s Curious Theatre will be announcing its 14th season in the coming weeks, but one title was pre-released today by the National New Play Network, of which Curious is a member company. It’s Allison Moore’s “Collapse,” described as “a provocative comedy” about the 2007 Minneapolis bridge disaster.Read more…

The eighth annual National Showcase of New Plays, which will be held Dec. 3-5 at Curious Theatre in Denver, has announced its lineup of plays to be presented as staged readings. A committee of artistic, managing and literary leaders from across the country selected plays by Stephen Sachs, Dan Dietz, Meridith Friedman, Jack Canfora and Megan Breen. Curious’ submission was “Blue Monday,” by Friedman.

Curious’ “Astronomical Sunset,” by Robert Lewis Vaughan, which opens in full production Nov. 6, will present its closing performance as part of the festival at 8 p.m. Dec. 4.

Film & theater critic Lisa Kennedy likes to watch -- a lot. She also has a fondness for no-man’s lands, contested territories and Venn Diagrams. She believes the best place to live is usually on the border between two vibrant neighborhoods. Where better to apply this penchant for overlap and divergence than covering film and theater – two arts that owe so much to each other yet offer radically idiosyncratic pleasures? In another life, Kennedy was an Obie judge. In this one, she’s been a Pulitzer Prize judge in criticism, an Independent Spirit Award jurist and Colorado’s first member of the National Society of Film Critics.

More than a mash-up of the Running Lines and Diary of a Madmoviergoer blogs, Stage, Screen & In Between offers engaged takes on Colorado theater and film and pointed views on news from both coasts and both industries. Culture lovers, add your voices. Culture-makers, share your production journal entries and photos.